These letters recount the day-to-day experiences of Robert Dahl during his year in Europe as part of the U.S. Army. He entered battle in October 1944 as a reconnaissance officer in the 71st Infantry Regiment, fighting almost continuously until the war's end in May 1945. He then worked in the post-war military administration of Germany until he was able to return home in the fall of that year. These letters are unique in presenting the experience of combat as it happened. War is sometimes d...

Theories of Democracy builds on Robert Dahl's observation that there is no single theory of democracy; only theories. Beyond the broad commitment to rule by the majority, democracy involves a set of contentious debates concerning the proper function and scope of power, equality, freedom, justice, and interests. In this anthology, Ronald J. Terchek and Thomas C. Conte have brilliantly assembled the works of classical, modern, and contemporary commentators to illustrate the deep and diverse ...

"A first-rate memoir" from a German soldier who rose from conscript private to captain of a heavy weapons company on the Eastern Front of World War II ( City Book Review).William Lubbeck, age nineteen, was drafted into the Wehrmacht in August 1939. As a member of the 58th Infantry Division, he received his baptism of fire during the 1940 invasion of France. The following spring, his division served on the left flank of Army Group North in Operation Barbaro...

As the twentieth century closed, the veterans of its defining war passed away at a rate of a thousand per day. Fortunately, D-Day paratrooper Joseph Beyrle met author Thomas H. Taylor in time to record Behind Hitler's Lines, the true story of the first American paratrooper to land in Normandy and the only soldier to fight for both the United States and the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany. It is a story of battle, followed by a succession of captures, escapes, recaptures, and re-escapes, ...

Only days after Normandy, Hitler is taken out of the equation and Heinrich Himmler, brutal head of the SS, assumes control of the Reich. On the Allied side, there is confusion. Should attempts be made to negotiate with the new government or should unconditional surrender still be the only option? With the specter of a German super-weapon moving closer to completion and the German generals finally allowed to fight the kind of war at which they are masters, the allies are pushed toward a cou...

A "masterpiece" from the O. Henry Award–winning author of Rich Man, Poor Man, this classic novel captures the experiences of three soldiers during WWII ( The Boston Globe ).The Young Lions is one of the most powerful American novels to tackle the Second World War. Ambitious in its scope and robust in its prose, Irwin Shaw's work is also deeply humanistic, presenting the...

A long-awaited English translation of the groundbreaking oral history of women in World War II across Europe and Russia—from the winner of the Nobel Prize in LiteratureNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYThe Washington Post • The Guardian • NPR • The Economist • Milwaukee Journal Sentinel • Kirkus ReviewsFor more than three decades, Svetlana Alexievich has been the m...

This captivating anthology gathers historic New Yorker pieces from a decade of trauma and upheaval—as well as the years when The New Yorker came of age, with pieces by Elizabeth Bishop, Langston Hughes, Joseph Mitchell, Vladimir Nabokov, and George Orwell, alongside original reflections on the 1940s by some of today’s finest writers.In this enthralling book, contributions from the great writers who graced The New Yorker’s pages are placed...

The Nazis' dark secrets are revealed, in a tense and compelling thriller from bestselling author Ian Slater.June 1944. The moment has come. The Allied pincers are closing in. Hitler has already ordered his jet fighters, V-1 flying bombs, and V-2 rockets into action. Now, in a desperate bid to keep his war machine churning, it is time for the führer to use the most secret weapon of all.For G.I. David Adam, it's a mission into hell. To stop Hitler's mad plan will take him and o...

“FDR’s centurions were my heroes and guides. Now Joe Persico has written the best account of those leaders I've ever read.”—Colin L. PowellAll American presidents are commanders in chief by law. Few perform as such in practice. In Roosevelt’s Centurions, distinguished historian Joseph E. Persico reveals how, during World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt seized the levers of wartime power like no president since Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Declaring ...

The Boys’ Crusade is the great historian Paul Fussell’s unflinching and unforgettable account of the American infantryman’s experiences in Europe during World War II. Based in part on the author’s own experiences, it provides a stirring narrative of what the war was actually like, from the point of view of the children—for children they were—who fought it. While dealing definitively with issues of strategy, leadership, context, and tactics, Fussell has an additional purpose: to te...

Winner of both the National Book Award for Arts and Letters and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory was one of the most original and gripping volumes ever written about the First World War. Frank Kermode in The New York Times Book Review hailed it as "an important contribution to our understanding of how we came to make World War I part of our minds" and Lionel Trilling called it simply "one of the most deeply moving books I h...